Photo by Joe DeNardo

When the great unground rockers Gun Outfit left their native Olympia scene a decade ago to reestablish their roots in California sometime ahead of their 2015 album, Dream All Over, you could hear how swapping precipitative glum for dry heat and wildfire air moved into the sound of that album and the subsequent 2017 release, Out Of Range, as they ventured beyond dim lit post-punk and into psychedelic cowboy mystique. It’s become some real DIY desert shaman shit that I’m all here for.

Through the smoke of “Unfelt Loss” — the first preview off the band’s first new double LP, Process & Reality — co-vocalists, guitarists, and primary songwriters Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith alongside bassist Kayla Cohen, drummer Daniel Swire, multi-instrumentalist Henry Barnes, and contributing artists Chris Cohen, Warren Le, and Danny Sasaki offer a much needed reprieve not only from the natural disasters that surrounded them during the recording of the album, but the man-made fires spreading throughout this country in the now. 

“We are habits of reality / Figments of a dream / Fingers traced along the seam,” Sharp meditates on the greater picture of the cosmos. “The stitches of belief / The image of eternals seen / An infinite of ways.” Keith’s voice trails echoes behind his existentialism, showering the sky with meteor light. For three whole minutes in its kindle of dusky punk guitars and hot celestial breeze, they’re allowing the mind to settle still into a perspective that takes in the wonder of it all, even as the world burns.

Directed by: Joe DeNardo

Gun Outfit’s Process and Reality will be released May 8th on Upset the Rhythm.